In depth and mini reviews of movies with a sprinkling of nostalgia and film music musings.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Patlabor - OAV (1988)

Introduction:

After the wild success of
the comedy sci-fi romps of Urusei Yatsura director Mamoru Oshii tackled an OAV
projected called Angel’s Egg. Viewers
found it too esoteric and odd. The series was considered a failure. It took a
few years, but Oshii was eventually brought on to helm another science fiction
series with a healthy dose of comedy. But in this case it was set in the near
future and involved giant robots. Would a director known for his wacky comedies
be able to handle something that had serious and satirical edge?

Summary:

In the near future giant
robotic suits are used for construction and dangerous situations where
mechanical muscle is needed. These suits are called Labors. Of course some
enterprising folks figure out how to used Labors for criminal activities. This
leads to the creation of a special unit of the police force: the Patrol Labors
or Patlabors.

Our story begins as we meet
the new second unit Patlabor unit in Tokyo. There is the huge Labor fan Noa
(Miina Tominaga) who names her Patlabor Alphonse, because that is just what you
do in situations like this. Her driver is Asuma (Yoshiko Sakakibara) a young
man who was forced into joining by his rich father. Piloting the other unit is
the gun crazy Ohta (Michihiro Ikemizu), and his driver Shinshi (Issei Futamata)
who is constantly calling his wife. On back up is the huge and hulking Hiromi
(Daisuke Gouri) who is really as gentle as they come. Leading the team is the
sardonic Goto (Ryunosuke Ohbayashi) who’s laid back manner hides his strategic
skills. The team will face rampaging Labors, giant sea monsters, ghosts and
terrorist plots. Will they be up for the challenge, or will this Patlabor squad end up laid off because
of the bad economy.

Good Points:

Impressive mecha and
futuristic design

Some amusing satirical
moments around cumbersome rules and annoying bureaucracy

Has a sense of fun that
keeps things from getting too dark

Bad Points:

Focuses more on parody and
satire than mecha action

Animation looks a little
rough in places

All the characters tend to
be pretty stereotypical

Overall:

An interesting intersection
of Oshii comedic projects with the science fiction path he would chart going
forward. The first four episodes focus on humor and tackling various anime and
film tropes. But the final three episodes tone down the humor and go for some
solid detective work and thrills. It is a mixed bag in the end. Some of the
humor doesn’t quite hit and some of the thrills feel a little tame. An
entertaining series, but it needed a bit more consistency.

Scores
(out of 5)

Visuals: 4

Sound: 3

Acting: 3

Script: 3

Music: 3

Direction: 3

Entertainment: 3

Total:3

In Depth Review

Putting the "patrol" back in Patlabor!

Oshii’s work on the Patlabor series falls between his two
best-known hits Urusei Yatsura and Ghost in the Shell. In many ways this
mecha series serves as the perfect bridge. It contains quite a bit of humor and
satire of life in Japan, but it also has some interesting sci-fi action.Episodes five and six cover a terrorist
plot that a specialized team must handle – just like Ghost in the Shell. As interesting as it is to see how this series
fits in the scheme of Oshii’s work, lets see how it works on it’s own.

From a visual perspective
the series looks pretty good for a late 80s OAV series. There’s some great
detail in the mecha and futuristic design of the vehicles. But most of the
outfits and settings tend to look pretty contemporary. This isn’t a big
surprise since it is supposed to be in the near future. Character design is
simple, but pleasing. It isn’t the AIC look, but it doesn’t have some of the
flair we’d see from Kenichi Sonoda who worked on Bubblegum Crisis around the same time.

Noa at the controls of Alphonse.

When it comes to the action
scenes they tend to be short, but realistic and solidly animated. These are not
extended slug-fests that you see in a lot of other anime series. Instead Patlabor shows that weapons that big
usually only need one or two hits to get its point across. It also shows some
of the issues a giant robot suit may have when dealing with urban environments.
For example, in the second episode Noa finds she can’t get her Patlabor under
an overpass and she can’t climb over it either. She’s literally stopped in her
tracks, and has to come up with a clever solution involving a blimp to get
around the obstacle.

Sound effects are pretty
standard stuff for anime of this era. Most of it is typical sound effect work
for a city: traffic, background chatter, sirens, etc. The mecha and weapons
have some specialized sound effects, but nothing as unique as the work used in Neon Genesis Evangelion or Gundam Wing.When it comes to music, Oshii began his fruitful
relationship with composer Kenji Kawai on Patlabor.
This is a collaboration that would continue for decades, with Kawai working on
nearly every one of Oshii’s projects (live action and animated) from this point
on. Kawaii had worked on the martial arts comedy series Ranma ½ and so was well versed on comedic score writing. His music
for Patlabor has a bit of that
style, but also uses his more action oriented style. It’s a bit frantic and
intense, something very different from what we end up hearing in Ghost in the Shell and Avalon. It’s neat to hear this initial
collaboration and how different both men approached projects this early in
their careers.

Goto doesn't know what to make of his new team.

Now I watched this seven
episode series in Japanese with English subtitles, so my judgment of the acting
is going to include my usual caveat. It is harder for me to judge Japanese
voice acting, but for the most part it really fit the show. Because of the way Patalabor shifts from humorous to
serious, it requires a cast that can make those switches at the drop of a hat.
And they do a very good job. I especially liked Ohbayashi as Goto. He injected
a real blasé attitude to his voice that really fit the animated version of his
character.

As for the scripts
themselves, well that is where it gets a bit tougher to judge. Patlabor doesn’t really take itself
seriously, but then it does. The show is at once a parody, then a satire, then
a thriller and then a buddy cop series. Now this isn’t anything new to anime,
and in fact it is something that makes anime fun to watch. But sometimes this
wild and wacky nature can create an odd sense of pacing. So while I had some
fun with the first four episodes, I also found that they were a bit on the slow
side.

Mad bombers don't phase Clancy in the slightest.

The first episode gets the
crew together and deals with them attempting to stop a rampaging Labor with
very little training. This episode plays out like a rookie cop movie, and
shares a lot in common with the first episode of You’re Under Arrest in the way the story plays out. The second
episode also follows typical police drama tropes, where a VIP comes to Tokyo
and terrorists target him for assassination. The Patlabor unit attempts to
thwart the plot and we meet their newest member Kanuka Clancy (You Inoue). She
ends up being cool, calm member of the team. This demeanor turns deadly when
she’s provoked (as we find out in later episodes). This episode also plays with the mad bomber episodes popular in most cop shows and movies.

Episodes three and four of Patlabor turn out to be the most silly
of the series. The first deals with a gigantic creature living in Tokyo Bay and
creating all kinds of havoc. There are several nods to the kaiju classic Godzilla, as well as other giant
monster films and anime. The ending is basically a ridiculous joke, one that
wouldn’t be out of place in Urusei
Yatsura. I thought it was funny that the narrator even says that it is a
disappointing ending. The next episode plays with the haunted hot springs
tropes that occur in lots of anime series (TenchiMuyo had an episode just like this, but with a less satirical ending). Essentially
the characters are sent to a training camp, but discover a girl and a Labor
haunt it. Yeah, you read that right: a haunted suit of robo-armor. The episode
turns into a detective show as the characters try to piece together why the
ghosts are haunting the camp. This whole episode plays so light and silly that
you begin to wonder if the series is really just going to go completely wacky going
forward.

Hijinks ensue when the team gets some time off.

Episodes five and six get
really serious, with a terrorist attempting to take control of Tokyo. Goto pits
his strategic brain against the terrorist who had military training. As the
story progresses, we learn that Goto may have a past with this man. Does this
mean Goto is in league with the terrorist? The first episode consists of both
men getting their pieces in motion on the chess board, and the second episode
they each make their final moves for a checkmate. This is the first episode
that doesn’t play like a parody of an anime or television trope.The humor here comes with an edge,
commenting on how bureaucracies can actually end up helping the villains that
know how to exploit them. The pacing in these episodes is the best of the
series. Every element works to turn these episodes into a fine thriller and
delivering a solid ending. To be honest, when I first heard about Patlabor, I thought this was going to
be what the whole OAV series was going to be like.

Oshii did not direct the
final episode, and it feels a bit different from the others. Like the previous
two episodes, it is more of a thriller than a parody. But the final episode
does inject a bit more humor into the script. In this story a stolen truck is
hijacked. The poor dope who stole the stolen truck doesn’t realize it has a
military grade patlabor on it, and a terrorist at the controls. What follows is
a chase into northern Japan, and ends with Patlabors engaging in the best mecha
combat in the OAV series (even if it does include some wrestling moves for
laughs).

Budget cuts cause cramped situations.

This first OAV series for Patlabor was a mixed bag for me. I
readily admit it was probably because of my expectations. I’ve seen clips from
the series and the movies, so I think I was expecting something a bit more
action oriented and serious. The fact that things went into a parody mode at
times really threw me, but I still had fun with it. I can see how Oshii’s Urusei Yatsura experience added to the
development of the series. This mix may not have clicked completely for me, but
it was popular enough to spawn a television series, a second OAV series, two
movies and a manga retelling. Patlabor
was a very popular franchise and I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of it. I think this is one of those shows that I will revisit
later and see how it plays with adjusted expections.

10 comments:

For writers, directors or artists, middle works, like middle school, are often neither this nor that -- neither neophyte energy nor mature proficiency. If they are fortunate the mix is interesting for that reason.

I might like this one as I like the SF mecha thing, though I tend to like anime a bit more serious sprinkled with a little bit of humor, than a lot of humor, satire, etc. I didn't know it was made by the Ghost in the Shell creator. I tried to watch one the other night, Gundam 00. I guess that's the version (another bit of anime confusion to add to the uninitiated like myself). At any rate, I don't know if it was too late, but the storyline confused me somewhat, but I liked the art, and the war zone action.

Here are a few animes I've added to my list, and I haven't even finished some I'm currently watching like Neon Genesis:

Yeah the humor can be make or break for some people. Anime humor can get really wacky at times, even if the rest of the series or movie is dead serious. It doesn't always work for me, but I have a few friends that find the whole thing obnoxious.

Gundam is a tough series to get a handle on, because it has so many variations, and has been around as a franchise for so long. It has a couple different time lines too if I'm not mistaken. The only series I've watched all the way through was "Gundam Wing" which I really liked back in the day (the late 90s). Really had a some serious war sequences and characters offing each other left and right. I found out later that "Wing" is considered one of the softer and fluffier entries in the saga. It did get a little angst filled at times, but in the late 90s that was kind of standard. Still I've heard that many of the earlier Gundam series had more realistic plots and gritty action.

Bubblegum Crisis is tough for me. The newer series has better plot development and character development. But the classic 80s version has more personality and is a bit more fun. The 90s one got very angsty and had some plot twists that just bugged me as an old time fan. But I think I'm in the minority on that one. The older series has a lot of silly elements to it, some questionable characters and most of the characters are pretty stock. But I love the character and suit design of the original and the rockin' 80s style music.

Vision of Escaflowne is a very good series, but it is much more of a fantasy with a lot of romance in it. If you're not up for love triangles this may not work for you. The world design is amazing though and there are some really unexpected and disturbing plot element in it. I really like it, but it might not work for everyone.

I re-watch Gundam 00 ep.1 again last night, just the first episode, and will try to find a few more episodes on YT. The copy I found was a subtitled one so you had to read and keep up with the story. What threw me off the first time around, I felt like I missed something and was dropped into the series without some prior knowledge of something that had happened before. But finally about ten or more minutes into the episode you find out what Gundam is about (or this part of the series): Gundam is a peace keeping force to stop war. So if you want to continue to create war, a dictator, or aliens, and are intent on war, be prepared to be blown up and subdued, uh like, in a war. :) Fight fire with fire I guess. :) At any rate, I found it novel.

Another thing that was interesting about it was that it did have a few hard SF elements to it: ie. on the space station, they had artificial gravity, so people could stand on the ceiling or whatever--there's no up or down. In some parts of one of the space ships, irrc, there wasn't any gravity, so people had to float around to get from place to place, and it looked like they had space elevators going up to the space station, though I may not have understood that correctly.

When you consider Oshii, it's certainly no surprise that some of these episodes are slow. But Patlabor is such a unique series. So many different tones as you mentioned. But, a bit like life really which makes this look at the future kind of realistic in a way.

I enjoy the character interplay probably the most with regard to the series, especially the TV series, but this is a great place for people to check it out. And I do think the animation is very good.

I do think the politics can be on the slow side and go a bit too far but Oshii loves that stuff.

I'm curious about the television series. I can see this working a bit better in that format. Yeah Oshii, is Oshii, so I knew that the pacing and the politics would be part of this series. It was the goofy tone that threw me.

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About Me

I'm a writer who loves movies, books, video games and music. Wow, that's pretty generic eh? Been a staff writer for DVD Verdict.com and animeondvd.com. I worked at a video store for nearly 10 years. Still working on genre fiction both short and novel length.